There is no precedent or even regulation permitting a public livestreaming of an execution, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit that provides data and analysis on capital punishment.
“Our records indicate the last public execution in the U.S. was in the 1930s,” the group’s executive director, Robin Maher, said today in a statement. “We have no record of any execution being live streamed.”
Maher continued: “We are not aware of any regulation or historical precedent for a military execution to be live streamed on the internet or otherwise made widely available to the public.
“Public executions are typically held in authoritarian countries to instill fear in the population, and to show the power and control of the government,” she added.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced yesterday that he had decided to allow the execution of Nidal Hasan, convicted in the 2009 mass shooting at Fort Hood Army base in Texas, to be made public. A Pentagon official later said it would be livestreamed, though the details haven’t yet been announced.
Hegseth said Hasan would be executed by firing squad at a facility at Fort Hood on Dec. 3.
Hasan has said that he wished he had died in the shooting at Fort Hood in 2009, in which 13 people were killed and more than 30 injured. If he didn’t die, he hoped to be executed so he could achieve the martyrdom he sought, he has said.
The decision has angered some Democrats, who termed it barbaric and called for the president to reconsider Hegseth’s decision.
“Livestreaming an execution is a barbaric spectacle,” said Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “This is yet another stunt by Secretary Hegseth to distract from his tenure’s repeated failings which have only weakened our national security and standing in the world.
“The Trump administration should reconsider this abhorrent move, which only gives the shooter what he wants: more attention and more control,” Reed said.